:hidesbehi Its not just me then, I'm actually finding it quite fun now, if it didn't have NFS in the name you wouldn't believe its from the same people that made the last 4. The menu systems lame and so's the announcer at racedays, but the actual racing gets very fun once you get past the first lot of races and the AI starts racing properly. Its very stunning visually as well, not over-done bloom effects like CM: Dirt, and some of the speed challenge tracks are very good.

The bios tells me its operating completely in single channel.

To be honest I can't notice an improvement in games, so I know I'm limited by my CPU & GPU, upgrade time now as they're both O/C'd as far as I can get them.

Hi folks, in a vain attempt to squeeze another few fps out this ageing system for a couple of games, I'm wondering if pulling a 512mb stick out my other system will help?

The machines currently setup as 2x512mb dual channel (PC3200), would the change to 3x512mb single channel (all still PC3200) affect performance in a good or a bad way? More memory, but single channel.

Opinions? Cheers.

Its hard to pick any single one.. some solo driving comes to mind in an old Audi. Running from the police in my college days springs to mind as well, don't think I've moved that quick by foot since then.

And just about every vehicle acident I've almost been involved in, or felt like I was going to die in. Being in a car going far too fast into a junction because heavily faded brakes pops to mind, or going up a road much too fast and it suddenly turning into a very rough dirt track with tree's in the middle. Strangely every memory that pops to mind happened in an Audi, must be a curse or something.

Intrepid's advice is the best I've read in this thread, the same line of thinking is true for R/C racing - turn up at your local track, ask around, find out what works there and whats for sale, and take it from there. You can't just ask away on here till you get the answer your hoping for, because its not going to happen. No you will not be competitive for £1000, I don't know a massive amount about karting, but as pointed out by so many here, there's a lot more costs to racing than just the upfront purchase.

And on the topic of funding..best advice I can offer you, go get a paper route or two. Thats what I did at your age, and it gave me a few quid to do what I wanted to do. There's plenty of ways to make money at your age so you don't have to leech off your parents bank. Money does not come easy, all this money your dads provided you that you seemingly waste on stuff that holds only a passing interest..you'll understand the value of it once your old enough to work. This month I've been putting in 60+ hour weeks at work so I have the spare dosh to buy a couple of things I want. You expect your dad to do this to fund you?

Linux is fine for day to day stuff, and has been improving steadily since I started messing with it years ago. But as already said, its rubbish for games, there's not many commerical ones that work, some of the most popular ones work under an emulation layer, but you'll need to keep windows around if you still want a decent choice of games.

The way I see it, its best used not directly on a typical desktop system. I've set a couple of servers up using it, which its brilliant for, and it was used on the workstations at my last job, which it was also very good for.

The way I see it the choice is simple. Since the V2.0 360 I've not heard of any big problems like the old ones overheating causing crashes, ring of death, etc. It has plenty of good games out now its been around for a while, and even a few brilliant ones, like Forza 2, Halo 3, Gears of war, The Orange Box, to name a couple. Online play also works quite well which is a bonus.

I am moderately suprised the PS3 is no more expensive than the top 360 though. An extra £50 (360 elite over premium) for a black case and extra 100gb HD doesn't scream value for money.

On a fairly-related note, is anyone using the 360 VGA cable to output the picture to a LCD computer screen? When I pick mine up I plan to run it through my 19" computer screen, with the hope of running it in HD (1280x1024 is this screens native resolution). Forza looked pretty stunning on my 28" telly through composite, can't wait to see it running at a decent resolution

Gamertag is "Rtsbasic", won't be back on Live till I pick up my own 360 at the end of the month though.

Is it possible to transfer profiles between 360's? My forza 2 one is on a mates, don't fancy the idea of starting fresh again.

Couple of random ones from my ipod:

Chris Daughtry
Hundred Reasons
Foo Fighters
Incubus
Jimmy Eat World
Just Jack
Alkaline Trio
Three Days Grace
Trapt

Try putting it into sequential, pushing FIRMLY down on the gearknob, make sure its exactly in the middle, and try turning the silver knob again. Sounds like the plate inside that controls gear movement is catching?

http://www.twinturbo.net/net/v ... eneral&msg_id=2079707

Some amazing peices of equipment there, shame its not open to public.

Why are you so against normal unleaded fuel? Just curious, when I put a tank of V-Power in my 106 it had slight backfire, although it did run well on it. Suppose because the higher octane rating, but I can't re-time my car for it (distributor-less ignition).

Supermarket forecourt fuel I wouldn't let near my car, drives like its watered down or something. Must be a reason its cheaper than normal stuff.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I never bother looking at the prices. I need fuel, so I get fuel.

And I only use Shell V-Power (Optimax was a much nicer name). If I can't get that, then BP Ultimate. If I can't get that then Total's equivalent. At a push I'll take Tesco99.

I might consider normal unleaded in an emergency. But I'd rather walk/call for a tow, than put supermarket fuel in anything better than a mower.

Edit: And it's not because I'm well off enough to not worry about the cost of fuel - I'm struggling to make ends meet as it is - but the price of fuel makes no difference. Without fuel life becomes difficult. I can always sacrifice Autosport or something.

Price at the one and only fuel station in the town I live is 101.99p right now for normal unleaded, the cheapest I've found within a 15 mile radius is 99.9p at a Shell station.

I'm just going to echo the above comments, I pre-ordered mine last year, and its had plenty of use over the last year or so - not just by me, a few mates have had a go on it, and are far rougher on the inputs than me, and it still feels new to use. The pedals are flawless and just as precise as day 1, the wheel itself still feels brilliant to use, and the gearshifter - not the best design ever, but it seems to last well, no faults to speak of.

I installed the Pro-Street PC demo today. And promptly uninstalled it 20 mins later. Not because I don't like the series, but this demo is rubbish - looks 5x worse than Carbon, runs at 1/4 the framerate, and drives pretty strange too. I can't understand why it has to look worse than a 5 year old game to run acceptable on a machine that will run Carbon with full bells & whistles @ a steady 50fps. Not that Carbon was a particually great game either, but at least it looked/ran pretty good.

The same demo on the 360..wow, looks twice as good as my PC will do, while running at a decent steady framerate. The demo is actually fun, looks good, and shows a lot of potential on console. Bit of a laugh to drive as well. Just not on the PC, which is just a lame console port with no optimization.

I tried running the program, but it errored out, saying the sensor didn't exist in the processor. Which makes sense, Speedfan doesn't find one in the CPU either. Whereas Speedfan & the app you attached both read the temp off my A64 system. Nifty little app though

I flashed the bios to the newest one, its not helped. Don't have enough thermal paste left to re-do the heatsink which rules out playing with the sensor, so for now I've just underclocked it by dropping the FSB (2x)33Mhz. Its been running a couple of hours with no problem so it'll do for a short term fix.

Er, not quite like in the video Smoking the processor isn't really my idea of fun. I take an average reading from several spots on the base of the heatsink, and if there's no heatspots its safe to assume the CPU core temp can't be much higher? Assuming good contact between core and heatsink, of course. Added to this, when you turn the computer on from stone cold, the BIOS already thinks its at 60C 10 secs after its turned on. At this point everything inside is still room temp.

I'm confident its not a dodgy install or bad thermal paste - I re-done it two weeks ago using the same method I have for years, and using Arctic Silver IIRC. Its not a problem I've ever had with any other systems I've built.

Thanks for the suggestion Bob, I'll take the processor out again today and see if I can move the sensor back a bit. Speedfan tells me its reading the motherboard sensor and not a CPU-Core one, unlike on my A64 system, so I'm confident its a motherboard sensor.

Hi folks, I'm having a very unusual problem with my "family" PC downstairs. Its an Athlon 3000XP, Asus A7V8X board, NV 6600GT, 1GB DDR2700, all fairly standard and a few years old. No O/C or anything on this system.

When I turn it on and go into the BIOS, its convinced the processor is running at 60C. By the time an OS has loaded, its upto 70C. Under a load the BIOS's thermal cutoff kicks in (Set to 100C - max setting, in bios) and the machine turns off.

Your probably thinking naff install, dodgy thermal paste or heatsink or something, but its none of these. Using a laser temperature gun, I've established the processor at idle is running at no more than 35-40C when browsing the web, and ~50C under a full load. My guess is its a dodgy sensor on the motherboard?

Is there any way to override the thermal shutdown in the bios? Or to force a different reading so it never cuts in? There is no option in the bios to disable it, and the max setting is 100C, and it still happens when set to this.

Its not really worth throwing money at a machine this old, but I'd like to keep it running.

The 2000XP's were nice overclockers in their day, my old one ran nicely at 2.1Ghz with benchmarks along the lines of a 2700XP, for a couple of years. Rarely went over 40C as well, but that might have had something to do with the daft old case I had with who knows how many fans in.

Loving the bright red brake caliper mate, sounds like she needs it

Quote from Jakg :

WTF.



She only goes 96 KM/h...

I was very suprised when I borrowed a mates 360 last week with this game. Playing it on a non-HD telly, its still visually stunning, and is easily the most fun I've ever had on a console racing "sim". The first Forza showed a lot of potential but I never really clicked with it, the 2nd one definately has a much more polished feel to it, and the way the cars react to inputs are very belivable - even on the gamepad. I've been playing it with a premium console but have yet to test it on Live.

My biggest complaint would be the total lack of G25 support for the 360. If I could use that on it, I'd bother buying the DVI cable to run it on my computer lcd. And the MS wheel is shite, only nice feature is it takes 30 secs to setup.

I found dropping the rotation down to 300 degrees or so helped with the steering lag a lot.

Paighton town centre already has all the xmas lights up down the highstreet. Looks plain daft when your walking under them and its still warm enough to be outside in just a shirt. A pub there already has the tree up! Madness.

Anyone know when the PC demo's due out? Looks like a bit of fun.